


Help to Half-a-Crown

by draw_a_circle_thats_the_foxhole



Series: Sure of the Sea [3]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: English Civil War, Gen, Murder, Salem Witch Trials, World War Two, and alfred's fucked up childhood, halloween fic, outsider point of view, there is discussion of war, there is some violence, this is supposed to be a frightening fic, warning: bad parenting, warning: gore, warning: gratuitous fish and chips, warning: horror, warning: mild brotherly feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 22:22:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21186935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draw_a_circle_thats_the_foxhole/pseuds/draw_a_circle_thats_the_foxhole
Summary: “He only did something after I went up in the tree and came down with a nice new rope necklace,” Alfred puffed fitfully now, breath unsteady, hand doubly so, shaking and sending ash all over.1640 and 1940. Arthur's madness follows them all.Gothic inspired Halloweenfic 2019. Oneshot. Complete.





	Help to Half-a-Crown

_ _

_Had he and I but met_  
_By some old ancient inn,_  
_We should have sat us down to wet_  
_Right many a nipperkin!_  
  
_But ranged as infantry,_  
_And staring face to face,_  
_I shot at him as he at me,_  
_And killed him in his place._  
  
_I shot him dead because —_  
_Because he was my foe,_  
_Just so: my foe of course he was;_  
_That's clear enough; although_

_He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,_  
_Off-hand like — just as I —_  
_Was out of work — had sold his traps —_  
_No other reason why._  
  
_Yes; quaint and curious war is!_  
_You shoot a fellow down_  
_You'd treat if met where any bar is,_  
_Or help to half-a-crown."_

Thomas Hardy

* * *

Shropshire England,  
November 1940

Edith lit a cigarette as the kettle screeched, announcing the water had boiled. She dumped a bit of tea into the pot, poured in hot water over the leaves and pulled the sweater tighter around her as the tea seeped and the house began to settle in for the night. 

The place was very obviously Tudor. No stately manor house perhaps, but the comfortable home of the well-to-do yeoman farmer. The steeply pitched roof came to a point over the brick walls of the main room, all held together by high open beams, as thick as ancient trees that crossed over her head like the ribs of a whale.

Early sixteenth century, with only the bathroom and kitchen having anything like modern amenities, the landlord had said. If a toilet in one room and a tap in each considered modern. The house didn’t quite look its age, the young Canadian soldier said he had painted it just the year before, but God knew the place sounded like an old man. The big house settled around her, creaking as it sank into the cold and rain. The walls seemed to sigh, as every Briton in the rain did. Its joints seemed as stiff as hers. 

She lit another cigarette. 

The place was haunted. There was no doubt about that. The Canadian who’d rented it out had told her as much with a wan smile under tired, bespectacled eyes. He’d reminded her of her own Jaime, still off with the Navy in Liverpool. 

So if it was haunted? With Jaime off halfway across the country, she wouldn’t mind the company. The old ghost wasn’t much in the way of companionship, just footsteps on old loft rafters and distant voices, the words as indistinct to her ears as the steam rising from the mug now were to her eyes. But a widow with nothing but a rented empty nest? She was almost grateful for it.

Jaime had found himself a bit of leave for the shearing and come out to visit. When he had taken up a bit of the choring, scrubbing down the plaster where it had turned grey with the lamp and cooking smoke they had discovered a priest hole over the living room hearth. They’d chipped away some of the plaster but their time had been cut short by a telegram rushing Jaime back to base. Jaime had left it, saying they’d crack it when he came home for the second round of lambing for the year. But she had delivered the last two lambs in October on her own. She’d managed, if barely. So it had stayed sealed shut. The damn thing groaned too, in the cold as she settled just next to directly beneath it in one of the old creaking chairs that had come with the place. She’d had the thought to get up on the step ladder and doing the job herself with a mallet and chisel. Still, when she’d written to the young Canadian to ask him about it, he’d asked her very politely, if she’d be so kind, to please leave it alone. 

So she had left bloody well enough alone. 

One more oddity in a slew of them. Edith had signed the lease just after Dunkirk when the entire country was alight with fear of invasion. Everyone with a bit of doff had been leaving the coastal cities for the inland villages. But few city-dwellers had ever handled a farm. Wild boar had appeared in the fog of early spring. The Tavishes had said it had come from the Forest of Dean. There was the big cat that she and Maggie, the yellow lab the previous owner left, had glimpsed on the edge of the upper paddock. It was a great big black sleek beast, slinking in circles in and out through the trees at the fringes of the forest beyond the back paddock. It had looked more like an oil spill splitting through water than anything substantial. 

Taking her time Edith drank her tea as slowly as she could before it would go cold, poured herself another and went to start the fire. Bits of newsprint for kindling, then a few solid logs would let her pass a cosy evening with the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Sheep Shearing’ she’d ordered from York not so long before. 

Managing the lambing without Jaime or the neighbour hadn’t gone horribly, and she had done rather well with the two lambs that had come in October. But even with that new experience, it had been a long time since she had lived on a farm. She’d been born to a farmer in Lancaster, had married another and had three children. But Jaime’s father, James, had died in 1917, months before his son had even been born. Then Edith’s husband, her two girls and Jaime’s mother had died of the flu. A whole family reduced to an old woman and a little boy. Cut down to that, she’d sold her tenancy, and after the war, she’d taken the boy into Birmingham. They’d lived in the bakery with her husband’s brother and sister-in-law. They’d baked and sold bread, and she had done the sums for over 20 years. It had never been a bad life. Jaime had never gone hungry like most every other child had done during those lean years of the 30s. 

Now, if she had a bit of land cultivated before she was too old to work it, Jaime might bring that Land Girl he chattered about back home to marry. She could hand the farm to him and live out the rest of her days surrounded by a few great-grandchildren. 

All that seemed rather plausible really. If the Germans didn’t invade. 

Maggie snarled from her place near the fire. Edith looked up at her. The ancient half-blind grump of a yellow labrador was decrepit. But the Canadian had told her the old girl’s hearing was as acute as it was in her youth. She, too, had come with the place. She lowered the book and saw how the old dog got up and padded over to snarl viciously at the door. 

“Easy there,” Edith said, wary. Something was scaring her, but even if she strained, she couldn’t hear a thing beyond the crackling flames and the tattoo of the rain on the roof like marching drums. Maybe it was the boar sniffing around the house or that odd big cat. But whatever was out there, it could not enter the house. 

“It’s quite alright,” She told Maggie, leaning down to stroke her with a knuckle between the ears. “It can’t get in here,” 

Then. There was a tapping. Faint. Who in heaven’s name was out this far in the depth of winter? She was miles from the village. It wouldn’t be the Canadian, he had said he would wire on his way through. The tapping came again. This time louder and more urgent. Demanding a reply. Maggie growled again. She cowered under the side table, tail between her legs. Well, there was only one way to find out. Edith rose and crossed to the window beside the door. 

“Who’s there?” She demanded. 

“Open up,” Came a man’s cracked, straining his voice. It sounded dry and punctuated by painful breathing, firing off in sounds queerly similar to the rattle of hailstones in the well outside. 

“What do you want?” 

There was a long pause. 

“I’m lost. And it’s starting to rain,” 

She sighed. Some poor fool of a stranger staying in the area who had lost his way in the endless hills. She couldn’t ignore a plea for help. Not these days when old MacDoon up the road had found a downed Australian pilot in his back garden the month before. 

“Just a moment please,” She said as she fished her keys from her apron pocket and unlocked the door. 

Making sure to turn up the gas in the lamp all the way before holding it firmly in-hand as she opened the top of the stable style door until the chain caught it. In the slit that was revealed, made smaller by the light of the lantern than it was the chain itself, she caught a glimpse of the stranger. 

From the glance she got, it was plain that he was either elderly or in pain, with stooping shoulders and a military overcoat that reached near to the floor. A peaked cap shaded his face. Convincing herself he was harmless, she undid the chain and opened the door further. Her own husband and son had been soldiers, and even her grandson now was a sailor. The officers had rules, regulations and honour. She nodded, more at herself than anyone else and let him in. 

“Well, you’d best get inside,” Edith wiped her sweaty palms on her apron. 

The man shuffled inside and made absolutely no attempt to wipe muck caked boots on the rag rug or to remove his hat, as would have been polite. Frozen rain poured from every horizontal surface of him. Head, shoulders, outstretched arms. He stood there, stolid and haggard. Every feature looked more wizened by hardship than by age. But the dull green eyes looked more like they could have belonged to one of the veterans of the South African wars who had come back all but dead already. They and the Great War Veterans who smoked their pipes on tenement stairs, squinting out at the world from under their flat caps. 

“Fancy a cup of tea…” She peered at his lapels for a ranking marker. “Major?” 

Reckoning the bob his head gave on his scrawny neck was a nod, she turned to put the kettle on as he finally shuffled his way to the vacant chair at the table. Maggie’s growl lowered to a hissing snarl. 

“Do you remember the Siege of Hopton castle?” He suddenly asked in a whisper of a voice that reminded her of the pull of chalk on the blackboard than it did of human speech. If the rain hadn’t dampened all the sounds of the sheep cosily sequestered in the barn, she might not have heard him at all. 

“I remember it from school,” She nodded, then tried to cut through his unnerving presence with a spot of humour. “But if you ask me to recite every King, I’d get proper jammed between Harold and the Henrys! All that tosh they forced in our heads. Who needs to know every King if they can do a bit of math!” 

“What of the sacking of Linley Manor?” 

“Read a bit about that. Happened not too far from here, right?” She smiled, poured him out a mug of tea and set it in front of him. He sniffed but then ignored the cup altogether. Linley was a mansion and estate up the county towards the church. The Tavish’s second boy, who’d studied to be a teacher before the war, said as much. It had been sacked, along with Hopton Castle, during the Civil War. Not that she could remember which side had done the sacking. The ruins of the castle were visible from the other end of the barn from the house. The ruined tower peeked out through the tops of the trees at the peak of the hill. 

“They were slaughtered. Those who fought the just cause right alongside the bloody roundheads,” His head lifted up towards the hatch above them in the little kitchen. Behind where she and Jaime had broken and cleared the crumbling, there was the newly exposing door. It was only a half-circle cut into the ceiling, but the major stared at it, fixed on the handle, trembling violently. She told herself he was shaking with cold. He stood, bent nearly double as his joints audibly groaned and brought his gaze down. 

Behind him, propped up against the wall, was the kitchen step ladder.

“The landlord— Mr Williams, said it’s a priest hole. He’s on his way to take a look inside it. He’s due for dinner at any time now,” She said, facing the kettle once more and before she realised what she was doing, she’d slipped a kitchen knife into her apron pocket. 

Without so much as another word, he dragged the step stool across her stone floor with raspy shaky clanking. 

“What are you doing?” 

He ignored her, as, with great difficulty, he set up the stepladder beneath the closed trapdoor. He didn’t look old enough to be this frail, but he mounted the steps shakily, clutching the rungs. She found herself praying that he would fall, lie in a limp heap on the floor where she could lock the doors until she could have him taken away to a hospital. But somehow, he held on, mounting one shaky step at a time until he was up. 

With a clawed fist, he bashed the rusted catch until it yielded. The heavy door plunged downwards on rusted hinges, swinging and creaking and missing the man’s peaked cap by only centimetres. Then, with agility, she didn’t think the man could have possibly had, he pulled himself up. An excited whisper came from his cracked lips as he secured his grip.

She gasped at the greasy, rotten stench that poured from the newly opened space. Vile and putrid like when a deer had gotten caught in the seldom-used back shearing shed and not been discovered till the next spring. 

“The landlord will be home anytime now!” She called up after him. He seemed not to hear, swaying unsteadily as he pulled himself up into the small space. Only a moment later, he disappeared through the opening until the only sign of him was his rasping breath, coming faster than before. The entire house was something like dark, with only the fire and the lamps to keep out the dim, but the priest hole itself seemed bleaker and more mysterious still. Impenetrably so, as if no light could pass at all. 

Muttering indecipherable cursing and billowing dust came from the trap door. The booted feet reappeared, then disappear, and the man’s face popped out. Just above her. She just barely bit back a cry. He looked gaunt and inhuman. The skin was stretched too tightly over his skull, his mouth too big for his face. 

“Where have you hidden him? Are you listening to me you roundhead cow, where have you hidden him?” He hissed down at her, and his green eyes looked more snake-like than human. She shuddered. 

“My— my grandson said there might be the second space up there,” She lied before she could think of what to say. 

He snarled and turned around, twisting impossibly in the small space. In two leaps, Edith got up the step ladder and had slammed the trap door shut. She had thought him clear— but what must have been his ankle caught and cracked easily— more of a chicken bone snapping than a grown man’s leg. But it must have because a heavy boot fell to the floor with a clunk. She shrieked, clapped a hand over her mouth, but took up the knife from her pocket and wedged it tight into the bar that had once held the latching beam, locking the little door into place. 

There was an unholy wail, something animalistic and curdling. Then fists against the wood but it held firm. That was enough. That was quite enough. She’d take the lorry into town—- or if that wouldn’t start she’d bloody well walk! Her boots were on, and her coat was buttoned up and she shoving a tam down on her head and taking up the keys to fetch help when the door slammed open and the landlord appeared in a burst of frozen slurried rain. 

“Mr Williams!” She sagged in relief. There was another shriek pounding on her like hammers to the temples. This one was inhuman. Maggie curled up tighter and whined pitifully from her hiding place in the corner. 

“Did he hurt you?” He asked. Even heads taller than the madman, he somehow couldn’t manage to loom. 

“No!” She said. “I trapped him up there before he had a chance— who is it he?” 

The boy opened his mouth to speak, and something looked uncertain behind his glasses. 

“Stop. Whatever you’re about to say is a lie so think it through before you speak, boy,” 

That caught him. He clamped his mouth shut and turned back to the priest hole. 

“My father,” Mr Williams sighed. “Sort of,” 

“What do you mean sort of?” 

“Well… he’ s—- he’s dead,” 

She blinked, sure she had misheard. “Come again?” 

“He died before I was born—” Her hackles raised. The young man, really more of a boy, was lying through his teeth. 

“Oh, he’s alive enough! I just cut off his foot!” She stepped forward pointed to the boot on the floor, which apparently had cut so cleanly there had not been blood. She didn’t know how it was possible. She’d hacked through many a cut of meat and not such thing had ever happened. Scooping it up, the leather disintegrated into her hand, shredding and some sort of putrid slime that somehow smelled both of puss and rotting meat poured out. She dropped the boot and jumped away, and as it hit the floor half an ankle bone and skeletal foot rolled out of its opening and onto the floor. The man or— whatever the bloody hell it was howled louder. 

“If he’s dead, how is he—” 

“My mother said that when she cried for him, he... came back for her,” He said it with a liars uncertainty, but she didn’t cut him off. How else could this be explained? “I thought she meant it in a dream! I never thought—” 

His mouth pulled tight again, same as it had before. The word mother might have been wrong, but there was truth in what he was saying. 

“Maybe it’s some sort of German trick or that gas they used in the last war or—” 

“It’s not the gas,” Mr Williams cut her off with icy blue eyes, half panicked demeanour suddenly dropping away for something specific and glacial. For a moment he seemed far, far older than he appeared before it melted away into congenial colonial officer. “They can’t have reanimated a corpse!” 

“Then what did?” She threw her hands into the air, frustrated. 

“I don’t know!” Another lie. “Does it matter? He’s up there somehow! Do you have somewhere you can go?” 

“The nearest neighbour is a mile away if I can even find the road in this weather!” 

The boy, because he was more of a boy than old enough to be in an officer’s uniform this close up, had closed his mouth to think, nodding thoughtfully. Then, silence. The rattling and screeching from behind the door had stopped. The man’s voice, chalky and breathy before, took on the falsetto men took on when trying to speak to small children. 

“I’m not going to hurt you, love. Just let me out.” 

“Dad?” Williams said, nervous but far too familiar for a son who had supposedly never met his father. He was that gangly sort of tall that just let him reach a hand up to the door of the priest hole, his hand flat against the chipping paint like a mother’s on her child’s feverish forehead. Tender, concerned, something like protective. 

The man’s response came in an explosion of wood splintering. The knife hit the floor, then Williams. 

“Dad!” He yelled out, hiding behind his forearms as the man or ghost or— something brought fists down on his elbows. “Dad, stop it! It’s me! It’s Matt. Your son!” 

“You’re not my son!” The man sounded more snake than human, something to his voice curled up and ready to strike. Williams looked as if he already had, more sad than frustrated now. But he hurled them over, rolling until Williams was on top. But then there were hands on his throat pushing down and his protest was stifled. Maggie decided then to fling herself at the men on the floor, but blind and old as she was she missed and slammed into the wingback chair. The curled hands around Williams’ throat dragged came up, still gripping and then slammed back down. His head hit the stone floor with a terrible wet crunch like when one of the tenants on her father’s farm had once accidentally dropped a melon down the cellar stairs. Williams stopped fighting then. There was blood trickling from his nose and 

He dragged himself towards her on two palms and one knee, unholy groans pushing through a jaw that somehow had come loose, as if hanging from his face by only the skin. She could do nothing but stand there, rooted to the spot by leaden feet, watching his approach. Williams had torn his coat in the scramble, and it slid down the arm, revealing black and bloody blistered skin. Green-grey eyes stared sick and deadly looking with the whites as yellow as a quarantine flag, warning her to keep away, to get away and stay away. But still, she rooted to the spot. 

“Where is he?” He gargled. The jaw wouldn’t move back as he spoke. When his head tilted, it stayed at the sick angle, hanging limp almost upside down. It was as wrong as watching an eagle owl twist his head around in a full circle to watch prey in the dusk. 

Suddenly, she was moving. To the left, along the wall. Faster than her old bones had run in years, turning, scooping up the knife and just as she straightened, the man was on her. The blade went in— and then right back out again. No blood. The knife dropped to the floor, the thing smiled something sickening. Her knees gave out, and just before she fainted, Edith could have sworn she heard Williams say, “You so owe me,” before she hit the floor. 

* * *

“Dude, did you actually babe ruth the old man?” Alfred asked between handfuls of fries. They’d stolen two chairs from empty beds up and down the hospital ward. The nurses disapproved of them using the space between Dad’s feet and the footboard mattress for a table. But they had been silenced by the platter of fish and chips Matt had shyly presented to the pretty ward sister as an apology for how Dad was. Arthur was bad enough when he was healthy, much less confined to a bed and in pain. They hadn’t said anything since so Alfred spread all six orders of not-yet rationed fish and chips in their crumpled newsprint wrappers across the mattress. Alfred had violently shoved the old man’s remaining foot off too dangle to Matt’s side of the bed and Dad had never been tall so there was plenty of space. Arthur was still out cold, half his upper body under the sheets wrapped in thick bandages yellow with burn gel.

“Yeah,” Matt shrugged, drizzling a bit of vinegar over his fries. 

“Right in the bean?” Alfred gestured throwing a baseball and hammering it with an imaginary Louisville Slugger.

“He was about to murder an old lady!” 

“Dude, that’s awesome,” Alfred laughed and flashed a smile that was more fried potato than teeth. “Wish I could’ve seen it,” 

“No, you don’t. Dad went completely off his rocker this time,” 

“Worse than back in May?” That had been the worst of the Blitz so far. 

“Just about. Shit, at least last time I had Dad locked up in the bunker with the King.”

“What’d you do about the old lady?” 

“She fainted into a heap after she stabbed him and he didn’t die. Left her a 50-pound note and a bottle of scotch and got the navy to grant her grandson leave.” 

Alfred laughed. “Right, scotch should get rid of the mental trauma of an encounter with Dad,” 

“Works for us doesn’t it? Judging how my GDP almost doubled every time Dad’s ship docked during Prohibition. ” 

Alfred snorted, peeled more newspaper back from his fish. “Should I go before he wakes up? He twitched,” 

“Why? Makes his year whenever you’re around,” Matt said and was pleased when the discontent didn’t show in his voice. 

“You’re nuts if you think that’s true. Besides, he hates when anyone sees him at anything but the full glory of the illustrious British Empire,” Some people flavoured dinner with vinegar. Alfred seemed to prefer bitter sarcasm these days. He rolled his eyes and shovelled more food in then stopped and looked thoughtful. “Well except for you,” 

“Bold of you to assume I count as anyone,” Matt muttered. Alfred looked stricken for a moment but before he could say anything, Matt’s pride stood up again. “You should have seen it. Absolute horror show. This time the mental case went wandering down into fucken Shropshire. He’s got the sheep farm down there but fuck, what a place to end up.”

Alfred pondered that, looking bizarrely pensive. “By Hopton Castle?” 

“Yeah,” Matt said, breaking off a bite of fish, then froze. “How the fuck did you know that?” 

“I have a sense of direction you know,” 

“In a plane maybe. But you know geography about as well as you know the fucking speed limit,” 

“Not my fault you putz around at stop signs,” Alfred huffed but didn’t deny his lead-foot. “And I know it because Dad took me once. Sometime after that shitshow in the ’40s, I think. I dunno when. They still had castles ‘n shit though,” 

“1740s or 1840s?”

“1640s, dude,”

“Shit,” 

They ate in a heavily silence then, the black veil of their early days hanging over them like fog. Eventually, Alfred gave up on trying to steal the portion of fries Matt had bought and was saving for Dad and began shovelling fish into his mouth. 

“That had better have come accompanied by a proper bit of mushy peas,” Arthur said instead of “Good day, Lads.” The newly formed skin on his face puckered, the general grey cast he’d had since Dunkirk deepening with the frown. 

“Dad!” Matt beamed for a second, scooting his chair up close. Alfred backed up down the bed, never too keen to engage with the old man until he was on the back foot, and Mr Roosevelt was around to save him. 

“Son,” Arthur nodded in acknowledgement and Matt grinned again. He was a son still. “Well is there any?” 

“Any what?” 

“Mushy peas, of course!” 

“Dad they’re ratio—”

“The details of your incompetence, as usual, don’t interest me,” Arthur sighed one of his grave, disappointing sighs, more suited to if someone had declared the Monarchy overthrown than vegetables being rationed. Matt curled back as if struck. Dad looked past Matt down the bed. “Ah, Alfred,” And there was an actual smile from the old man. 

"Don't look so happy. I'm only here as a private citizen." 

Matt heard the affection in his father's reply. Not the words. But it was enough to know he was dismissed. He shoved his hands in his pockets and muttered something about going out for a smoke, disappearing like Arthur’s disappointment had vaporised him with all the other buildings. He stood outside just up off the curb in the busy London street to smoke. The city had always been a grey hulking beast, its streets clogged with filth and smog and rain as if they really were Arthur’s blocked arteries. It was a far cry from home. Even in Montreal, the snow cleaned the streets, still came down from the sky white. Here, the rain showed grey on the back of his hand. He was on his third cigarette when Alfred joined him an eternity later.

“You got a smoke?” 

Matt sidestepped a nurse he’d been making eyes at and ducked under the eave to save the cigarette from the rain.

“Sure,” He nodded. “Nicked ’em from you anyway,” He slipped one from the pack and handed it over. Alfred lit it and leaned into the outer stone wall. 

“Dad’s a dick,” He said after his third puff. 

Matt snorted. “No shit,”

He listened to the rain for another moment. Mother nature tapped her fingers on city cobblestones to them. She was still there. No matter the circumstances of the world, or how industrialised England got, nature was always there. He watched people come and go, turning every once in a while to not look strange and after a long while, Alfred shifted next to him and spoke. 

“The door he cut his foot off in. It was in the ceiling, right?” 

“Yeah?” Matt frowned. “How’d you know?”

“He went down there looking for the Good Reverend Simon Young,” Alfred said it with weight like the man was someone Matt should have known like it was some famous name. 

“Who the fuck is that?” 

“The one who— c’mon Matt, you were around then. You know how that stuff went down,”

Matt fixed him with a flat-faced look of annoyance. 

“Yknow, way back when. Early days. Like, Boston was still cowpaths and brick days. Come on, you were there too. Kids got sick, cows went dry, Dad wasn’t around. You know the deal.” 

Matt didn’t, because his earliest settlers weren’t that fanatically batshit insane, but nodded as if he did. He thought he had an inkling of where this was going now. 

“He hunted down the fucker,” Alfred said. “Dragged him to London. Did the draw and quartering himself.” 

Matt dropped his cigarette to shove his hands in his pockets and lean heavily into the wall, feeling newly unsteady. Sometime’s he forgot he’d been so lucky when Arthur took him. He had only been stripped naked and shaven on the docks for all of New France to see. What was a haircut and a few lean years to that? 

“He only did something _ after _I went up in the tree and came down with a nice new rope necklace,” He puffed fitfully now, breath unsteady, hand doubly so, shaking and sending ash all over. 

“Fucking Christ,” Matt said, his stomach curdling. 

Alfred shuddered, holding the cigarette between his hands like it was the last source of warmth on earth and staring at his civilian shoes, continued. “Went dangling with the Right Honorable Reverend Simon Young presiding,” He said with a shakey mockery of the stiff, droll tone of British authority. Matt could only nod, but Alfred wasn’t looking. He was somewhere far away, long ago. 

“By the time Dad got back and got my shit together, Young had fled back to England. His family that owned the place were Catholic Monarchists. Had a nice little priest hole carved out already, as it was. But dad found him anyway. Gave him a traitor’s death. He told me that later. As a bedtime story, I guess, complete with the head for a Christmas present.”

Matt stared at his feet now too. Sometime’s he forgot the only thing worse than Arthur’s ambivalence was his affection. “He killed someone for you?” 

“And now he reenacts it when he’s out of his mind,” 

“It’ll pass,” 

“That’s the problem. He knows it and so do I now.” 

“What?” 

“You saw him!” Alfred gestured fitfully at the door. “That’s our great pater familias.” 

“If the Germans haven’t invaded by now I don’t think—” 

“It doesn’t matter." Alfred exploded, suddenly back here in the present. "The hand over is coming! Either Dad is going to figure out how to manipulate me into war or Ludwig’s going to fuck up and drag me into it. And when it’s over—” 

“Dad won’t be head of the family,” Matt finished, finally putting it together. They had all known it was coming since 1918. Power had always rested in the New World, in some form or another. Now all of it would. 

“Yeah,” Alfred nodded, dropped the last centimetre of cigarette and put it out with his heel. “I think the next time you see me, I’ll be in green.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr here:
> 
> https://draw-a-circle-thats-the-foxhole.tumblr.com/
> 
> I post history and Hetalia and aesthetics.
> 
> Kudos, comments and critiques are life. Thank you for reading!


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